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Dear MR. PUNCH,—­I hear that some people are in a great state of mind lest some blessed Bill brought in by the Government, should “destroy Voluntary Schools.”  What howling bosh!  Why, there are no Voluntary Schools!  No, they’re all Compulsory, confound ’em! or who’d attend ’em?  Not Yours disgustedly,

A HUMAN BOY.

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MR. WELLER & CO., AND THE ’BUS STRIKE.—­Mr. SUTHERST seems to occupy, as towards the ’Bus-drivers, a similar position to that filled by the eminent Mr. Solomon Pell, the general adviser, and man of business to the Elder Mr. Weller, and his professional coaching brethren.  It is to be hoped that the Solomon Pell of the ’Bus-drivers has been treated as liberally as was the real Mr. Pell, the friend of the LORD CHANCELLOR, by Mr. Weller Senior, the Mottle-faced Man, and others.

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OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.

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The most interesting book, one of the Baron’s Retainers ("blythe and gay,”) has read this year is, The Life of Laurence Oliphant.  If it were not written by a reputable person, and published by so eminently respectable a house as BLACKWOOD’s, there would be difficulty about accepting it as a true story of the life of a man whom some of us knew, as lately living in London, wearing a frock coat, and even a tall hat of cylindrical shape.  Such a mingling of shrewd business qualities and March madness as met in LAURENCE OLIPHANT is surely a new thing.  A man of gentle birth, of high culture, of wide experience, of supreme ability, and, strangest of all, with a keen sense of humour—­that such an one should voluntarily step down from high social position at the bidding of a vulgar, selfish, self-seeking, and, according to some hints dropped here and there, grossly immoral man, should, at beck of his fat forefinger, go forth to a strange land to live amid sordid circumstances, and with uncongenial company, to work as a common, farm-labourer, to peddle strawberries at a railway station, passes belief.  With respect to Mr. HARRIS, one feels inclined to quote Betsy Prig’s remark touching one who may, peradventure, have been a maternal relation.  “I don’t believe,” said Betsy, “there’s no sich a person.”  But there was, and, stranger still, there was a LAURENCE OLIPHANT to bend the knee to him.  Not the least striking thing in a book of rare value is the manner in which Mrs. OLIPHANT has acquitted herself in a peculiarly difficult task.  No man would have had the restraining patience necessary to deal with the HARRIS episodes as she has done.

The Assistant Reader has been refreshing himself with Lapsus Calami, by J.K.S., published by MACMILLAN and BOWES.  It is a booklet of light verse, containing here and there some remarkably brilliant pieces of satire and parody.  The first of two parodies of ROBERT BROWNING is unsurpassable for successful audacity.  The last poem in the book is “An Election Address,” written for, but apparently not used by, the present POSTMASTER-GENERAL, when he was Candidate for Cambridge University, in 1882.  He says of himself, after confessing to a dislike for literature and science,—­